Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Trigger warning: Some body horror throughout.
Wow. So Carrion Crow was a gut punch. Parry is partly inspired by the true story of Blanche Monnier and writes a fictional story following the Périgord family. I just felt pity for the character of Marguerite and absolutely loathed the character of Cécile. It was a lot of story to wade through and at times I found myself just getting impatient for the terrible ending that I knew was coming. I can give this one 5 stars, but can tell you now, I have zero intention of re-reading it. It’s a bleak book and showcases how terrible a mother’s so called love can be. But it’s woven together very well with enough clues to things before everything gets spelled out at the open towards the end of the book.
Carrion Crow follows Marguerite Périgord and her mother, Cécile. Marguerite has an offer of marriage, but her mother insists that she’s not ready to be a wife, and instead needs to be locked away in the family’s attic to study Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. The book jumps between Marguerite in the present, and then Cécile’s family and how she came to be married in to the Périgord family and what led her to do what she does.
As I said above, I pitied Marguerite. She sits and studies the books left to her, daydreams about what her life will be like when she can flee her mother’s house, and daydreams as well about food and hot water. She’s a prisoner and has no idea she is until it’s too late to do anything about it. Realizing she’s not alone due to a carrion crow that has hidden itself in the roof of the attic, Marguerite studies the mother bird and how protective she is of her offspring. We also get the slow decay of Marguerite’s mind and body along with the house, which I thought was very fitting. Yes we get a lot of symbolism in this book and it’s not subtle.
When the book shifts to Cécile, you do get, or at least I did get a small sense of pity for the young girl not realizing what she was marrying into. But the choices she made and continued to make are going to have you despise her. We also get other characters in this one, we get to “see”/hear about Marguerite’s younger brother and sister. Her father who has long quit the family by the time Marguerite is locked in the attic. Marguerite’s fiancee and someone else who is the cause of why she got locked away.
The flow of the book goes back and forth between both women’s perspectives until the very brutal ending.
The setting of the book takes place during Queen Victoria’s reign and we know the ending gives us a clue that when things are done and dusted, Victoria is dead and her son is ruling.
As I said above, this book definitely shows you the ugliness behind families and specifically mothers and daughters.
